eBooks

The big players – Expanding their offering and reach

Thursday, 27 October 2011 09:10 Written by Mark Seabrook

Amazon, Kobo and Google have all been very busy in the last month expanding their device offering and their geographical reach, hoping to put their device in your hands this festive season and secure your future e-book purchases.

Amazon kicked things off on 28 September, launching their much speculated tablet device, the Kindle Fire, which will ship on 15 November and sell for $199. During the same press event Amazon announced a touch-screen version of the Kindle selling for $99, a non-touch-screen Kindle selling for $79 and a new mobile web browser called Amazon Silk. ‘We’re making premium products and offering them at non-premium prices’, says Jeff Bezos (Amazon CEO).

THE KINDLE FIRE

A week later, on 6 October, Google announced the launch of their Google e-books UK store, which will include e-books from Hachette, Random House and Penguin and over two million public domain e-books. The Google e-books are stored in the cloud and will work across a range of devices.

Are libraries dying? Unlikely so!

Wednesday, 26 October 2011 13:10 Written by Julia Lhuillery-Moulder

With the rise of e-books one may think that libraries have problems keeping up. It seems that, on the contrary, US libraries are becoming again a popular place to visit.

OverDrive – the leading e-book and digital audiobook distributor to libraries – stated that e-book checkouts increased by more than 200% in 2010. Furthermore this trend is accelerating as the checkouts nearly tripled in September 2011 reaching 12 million so far this year.

According to a recent study from the American Library Association, more than 2/3 of public libraries in the US offer e-book checkouts. OverDrive distributes to over 15 000 public and school libraries in the country. To ensure that e-books supplied by libraries are compatible to a majority of e-readers and mobile devices, OverDrive has partnered with high profile companies such as Sony, Amazon and Barnes and Noble which allow library lending.

Libraries are more appealing than ever. People can just visit their local library’s website from their home or mobile phone, and download the e-books of their choice. Mobile and tablet users represent 21% of the checkouts according to OverDrive.

US school libraries are also embracing modern times. 44% of school libraries now offer e-book lending to students and the number is on the rise since only 1/3 of schools were providing this service last year. E-books appeal more to the higher echelons of education - 71% of high school libraries, 55% of middle schools and 35% of elementary schools offer e-book checkouts.

Few South African libraries currently offer e-books but looking at the trend overseas this situation is likely to improve. The stumbling blocks for libraries may be the cost of integration with e-book distributors like OverDrive and the small penetration of e-book devices in South Africa.

Will Digital Dominate Publishing by 2020?

Monday, 24 October 2011 13:29 Written by Lara Aucamp

According to the early findings from The Digital Census 2011, The Bookseller’s annual survey of digital trends and opinions, more than half of people working in the industry think that by 2020, sales of eBooks will overtake those of their printed counterparts.

The battle continues for dominance in the e-Book publishing industry

Tuesday, 30 August 2011 07:20 Written by Anthony Booysen

Publishers are signing never before seen deals, and it shows the industry is thinking about adaptation to the power shift. The big players are making hard decisions, and often reasons for doing things are not strictly financial. This counts as much for the authors as illustrated by Timothy Ferriss. Amazon’s “big new hardcover” book secured Ferriss a 7-digit deal with the industry giant, selling the rights to bestselling new self-help book The 4-Hour Chef. A publisher that has direct relationships with the ultimate consumers maintains a large advantage in offering this to authors like Timothy Ferriss in signing up.

The acquisition of the print bestseller could be a sign of things to come. Authors might begin to deal less so with agents and commissioning editors, instead moving to the companies that sell their work direct to the consumer.

Some authors are opting for technology driven businesses rather than a purely publishing focused company. Others continue to publish and sell their own e-books under their own imprint while printed versions are marketed and sold by the publisher through its distributors. Some publishers are prepared to hand over control to authors with marketing skills, as they still want the fame and attention. Author John Locke is a good example of the quick rise to fame some self published authors have seen selling well over a million e-books on the Amazon platform.